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Chamber meeting addresses urgent need for more volunteers
HARTINGTON — Residents delivered dozens of ideas for reviving the Hartington Chamber of Commerce at a town hall Wednesday, answering the chamber’s call for input.
About two dozen people attended to share their views.
Hartington Chamber of Commerce President Ray Sukovaty opened the meeting by stressing the value of public input.
“We need to get some input on what we can do to grow the chamber and make it survive,” he said, noting that dwindling participation recently forced the chamber to eliminate a seat on its board of directors after it went unfilled.
Two major takeaways emerged from the 90-minute meeting:
• The chamber is too important to fail.
• Personal, face-to-face outreach is essential to recruiting volunteers.
Chamber member Bridget Whitmire said she has belonged to the chamber for two years but has “never really gotten anything about what the chamber does.”
Lacey Kramer said the chamber must do a much better job of marketing itself.
“I think information about the chamber needs to be more available, more out there,” she said. 'I don’t think people know about it. They think it’s just business owners. We need to tell people what the chamber is and what it does.
Kramer attended her first chamber meeting this year and said she has learned a lot about the group.
Hartington business owner Jim Anderson said too many people rely on email, texting and Facebook instead of talking in person. Electronic communication makes it easy to ignore requests for help, he said.
“If you talk to people and ask them to help, they are much more likely to say ‘yes,’” Anderson said. “There is just way too much of this email and Facebook stuff going on. If you want people to help, then go out and talk to them.”
Former Chamber President Karma Schulte agreed.
“When we had big events, we went out and talked to people and they agreed to help out. That one-on-one contact is important,” she said.
Other ideas discussed included:
• Raising dues and hiring a part-time staffer whose job would be personal outreach and event organization.
• Lowering or eliminating the fee for associate members to encourage broader involvement.
• Publicizing that anyone can join — whether they operate a business in town or work elsewhere.
• Resuming special events the chamber once held, such as the Community Member of the Year award and the Community Appreciation Feed.
• Work to promote Hartington's chamber banquet and get more people to attend so it might once again become the big annual event of the year.
• Creating a brief survey to ask residents whether they have attended chamber events, what they enjoyed, and whether they would volunteer in the future.
Sukovaty closed the meeting by thanking attendees and said the board will begin drafting a survey to gather more input and “hopefully get more people interested in helping out.”
